Loch Lomand and Stirling Castle Tour

We had the good foresight to book a tour with Rabbie's Tours.  9:00am to 6:00pm being driven around the countryside with 9 other passengers on a shuttle bus.

Rabbie's Tours is named after Robert Burns.

Our driver / guide, Tony, was great.  He regaled us with Scottish history, humour, and even some good tunes.

Plenty of brilliant photo ops, and loads of less than brilliant ones too.

According to our guide:  Scotland has 5 million people and 10 million sheep.  Two sheep for every person.  One to eat, and one to keep you warm.

According to legend, Kelpie are water serpents that when hungry, take the form of a horse and leave the water to feed.  These big black stallions lure you into the water, until you drown and then they eat every scrap of you except your liver.


A 90 minute stop at Stirling castle isn't quite long enough to see everything thoroughly.

View from Stirling castle.  The brown tower in the middle is a monument to William Wallace, A.K.A. Braveheart.

Our guide says:  Braveheart could not be less accurate if it included an animated dog and was called Wallace and Grommit.
William Wallace was around 6'7" and spoke Gaelic, not Australian.
He also never painted his face blue.  The Picts painted their bodies blue.

Next, it's on to Loch Lomand...

Room Service?

Tired out from a long cold & drizzley day.  Our hotel's restaurant doesn't have any decent non-greasy veggie options, so we're forced to strike out again.

The next-door Lebanese cafe (Palmyra Pizza) wins the proximity prize.

A surprisingly tastey and hearty pizza with mushrooms, black olives, and sweet corn.  Nice mild tzatziki-like white sauce on the side went well with it too.

Upon arriving back at our hotel room, we discovered we had some difficult decision(s) to make.

David Bann

Super frou frou nouveau vegetarian restaurant "David Bann" is brilliant.  We only ordered three of their tapas, but all were excellent.  Portion sizes are a bit small for the pounds, but it's within Frenchy frou frou expectations.

The Royal Mile

The weather won't seem to cooperate today, so we took a £3.30 taxi to Edinburgh castle.

Then walked down the Royal Mile.  Loads of tourist paraphernalia to gawk at.  Kilts and cashmere in every storefront.

We popped in to Mary King's Close for a one hour tour of the underbelly of the old city.  Neat to see and walk on the actual floors from the 15th century abodes of some of the denizens of old Edinburgh.

Breakfast in the City

Our hotel is overly expensive for breakfast, and they can't handle a la carte, so we headed out.

City Restaurant serves breakfast all day.  A nice, slightly different full breakfast (sans sausage), as well as pancakes for us today.

Now we're all fueled up and ready for a cold & drizzley day in downtown Edinborough.